Madras, therefore, was formally receded to England, and the combatants on the Coromandel Coast were left eyeing one another, looking for some new cause of conflict.
But the game of French and English was over.
[PLOTS AND COUNTERPLOTS]
A.D. 1748 TO A.D. 1751
When the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle ended open warfare between the French and the English, both naturally turned their eyes more keenly upon India.
What they saw there was stimulating to those who felt within themselves the power of conquest. On all sides were petty wars and rumours of wars. The horrors of Nâdir-Shâh's invasion were being forgotten, but the country was not coming back to its pristine quiet. There was a strange new factor in India now: the factor of a new knowledge of alien races, by whom it was possible to be helped, or who could in their turn give help.
But this, still, was only about and a little beyond the sea-board. Up-country matters went on much as ever. Mahomed-Shâh's majesty crept out of its hiding-place again, and made shift with a pinchbeck peacock throne, a pretence of power.
Bâji-cum-Sâho, the Mahratta, however, almost ere he recovered from his alarm at the Persian hordes, had died, leaving his son, Bâla-ji, as Peishwa in his stead; leaving him also some very pretty quarrels to settle. One with the semi-pirates of Angria, which, involving the Portuguese, ended in the latter being ousted from India in 1739 by the Mahrattas, who, however, admitted to the loss of five thousand men in the siege of Bassein alone.
But Bâla-ji was a strong man, fully equal to the position in which he found himself; and after driving his most formidable private enemy and claimant to the Prime Ministership, Râghu-ji, back to his task of besieging Trichinopoly, he turned his attention to aggression. He began by renewing the long-deferred claim on the court at Delhi, and was granted it, on condition that he aided the Governor Ali-Verdi-Khân to repulse the invasion of Râghu-ji; who, having succeeded in his siege, had made an independent raid into Bengal. This opportunity of killing two birds with one stone was naturally welcome to Bâla-ji, who drove out the intruders without difficulty, and received his reward.
But, so far as Bengal was concerned, it was merely a postponement of an evil day, for Râghu-ji returned to his prey, and finally obtained the cession of a large part of Orissa, and a tribute from Bengal itself.